


nepenthe

by fulmiinata



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Cancer, I'm so sorry, Other, self indulgent sad fic, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1855225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fulmiinata/pseuds/fulmiinata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was ten, they said he had a chance. When he was fifteen, they said he was terminal. But once he hits twenty,  Haru might not even be alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nepenthe

**Author's Note:**

> nepenthe | n-‘pen-THE (nuh-PEN-thee) | (n.) something that can make you forget grief or suffering.

His feet dangle high off the ground, hitting the exam table as they swing back and forth. Beneath his small, thin, pale fingers the paper crumples. 

Even though it's the middle of summer and the thick heat wrapped around the town is inescapable, Haru still shivers, goosebumps rising on his arms and face. He knows that no matter how many blankets are on his bed or how thick his jacket is he'll never be warm, because the cold comes from within. 

He just wants to swim, so badly, but instead he's stuck here in this hospital room, waiting while his parents have a conversation with the doctor they think he can't hear. 

"Never seen anything like it... It could be a genetic disorder, a virus maybe..." the doctor is saying, probably looking down at his clipboard like it's going to tell him the answer. 

"What are we supposed to do?" his mother's normally even, smooth voice is whispery, cracked like an eggshell. 

Haru's eyebrows quirk upwards before scrunching back down as he turns his head to look out the window. The sun is bright, casting intense yellow light over the lime green of the grass outside. It's one of those days, when the sky burns white with heat and everything is lit up, illuminated and sparkling like diamond. On days like these, his mother chills watermelon in their big wooden basin outside while everyone else lies on the porch, sweating the heat from their bodies. 

His mouth itches at the thought of watermelon. 

When he can't stand to look at the painfully sunny day outside Haru gazes at the window that shows the waiting room, where he rests his eyes on a boy with a shock of bright red hair and a brighter smile that reminds him too much of the sun. He talks animatedly, using his whole body to tell a story, not just his mouth. 

Suddenly the boy stops, catches Haru staring at him from the other room. He offers a toothy smile that isn't returned. 

Haru won't see this boy again for three more years. 

—

Haru hates the color white, he decides. Everything about the hospital is white; the walls, the sheets, the coats the doctors who treat him wear. He's tired of the color, the absence of it, and it almost makes him sicker than the disease he's afflicted with. 

Even the world outside is white, coated with freshly fallen snow. The sky is light gray and watery purple, washed out with the evening. It's one of those days, when the sun hides and everything is bathed in cool shadow. On days like these, his mother would read him a book on the couch, while everyone else curled up next to the fire. 

He hasn't seen his mother in a month, not since he was moved permanently to the hospital. He misses her, her long black hair and soft hands, and he misses his father, with dark blue eyes and a broad mouth. He misses his grandmother, who used to lie in a white hospital bed just like his. 

The door to his room suddenly clicks open, slipping Haru from his thoughts back into reality. A girl is standing on the other side, frail and wearing a gown that matches Haru's, with cherry red hair that reminds him of someone. Her smile is bright as she hands him a small box of mochi, tied with crinkly cellophane and a blue bow. They're the most colorful things in this part of the hospital. 

"Merry Christmas!" the girl says, before scurrying from the room. 

To the empty space where she used to be, Haru says, "Thank you."

—

He's turning thirteen today, and as a birthday present the nurses have allowed him to wander outside in the garden for a bit. Haru makes sure to touch every plant and flower he sees, to remember the feel of each silky petal beneath his fragile fingertips because he won't experience it again for a long time. 

Sunlight glimmers on the surface of a small pond not too far from the bench Haru sits on. He rises, shakily, to walk over and dip his toes in the welcoming water. As much as he doesn't want to believe it Haru knows the water won't heal him this time despite the many previous instances where it has. No matter how long he spends in his bath or even how much he drinks, the water can't do anything. He knows this, but likes to pretend he doesn't. 

"Today's a good day to swim, huh?" 

Haru's eye twitches. This supposed to be his special time—whom exactly does this person think they are, coming in and interrupting? 

"I'm Matsuoka Rin!" they continue. Their voice is throaty, kind of raspy, with sweetness layered below it. It's like hard candy. "I know I have a girly name, but I promise I'm a boy! Who're you?"

"Nanase. Haruka." Haru bites out, turning his head to look at the boy so he can narrow his eyes at him in hopes he'll get the memo and leave, but stops when he remembers this is the boy from the waiting room, back when he was ten. He still has that same shock of red hair, shaggy and curved in towards his chin. A thick strand of fringe cuts between his charming, large red eyes. 

"Nice to meet you Haru! Are you visiting someone? I'm here for my sister Gou, in room 416."

Gou must be that redhead girl, who comes into his room every Christmas with some kind of treat. She's down the hall, some four or five rooms away. 

"Call me Nanase. And I'm not visiting anyone." He tries to keep his replies terse as possible. He doesn't feel like talking to anyone, much less this bubbly, charming boy. 

"Oh. So then what're you in here for?" Rin tilts his head to the side slightly, genuine curiosity in his expression. 

"My immune system's failing. They have me on these drugs so it doesn't attack the rest of my body, but according to them I'm not supposed to live past twenty. If I'm not careful, I could die, just like that." Haru punctuates his statement with a snap of his fingers.

"That really sucks," is Rin's reply, and although it is less than sentimental, Haru finds he appreciates it more than condolences. Everyone else tiptoes around him when he talks about his condition, says they're sorry when they have nothing to be sorry about. 

Haru ends up asking in return why Rin is here. He knows Rin is lucky enough to just be visiting, but he wonders what it is Gou suffers from. 

"My sister needs a new heart." And with that, quick as a hiccup, Rin's cheerful demeanor melts away to expose the clean white bones of sadness. He must love his sister a lot, if this is how he reacts to talking about her, Haru thinks. 

"I wish she could take mine."

Rin visits once a week, every Wednesday, after that. 

—

The little boy with leukemia that Haru shared a room with dies around mid August. 

Haru spoke to him only once, to say Happy New Year, and he doesn't feel sadness so much as an empty feeling in his chest. The hospital room seems too big now for just one person; he feels uneasy without that constant presence beside him. 

It isn't one week later when he gets a new roommate. 

He's tall, taller than any of the other kids in his age group. He has brown hair and green eyes that remind Haru of the plush grass outside his window that no matter how close it is to him it will always be out of his reach. He smiles a lot, even though in Haru's eyes there isn't much to smile about. 

"I thought you'd be a girl," the boy chuckles the first day. "When they told me my roommate would be named Haruka, but I think it's better this way. Now we have something in common." He offers a gentle, easygoing smile that crinkles the papery skin by his eyes. 

With an outstretched hand that's large and bony, the boy introduces himself properly. "I have a girl's name too; Makoto. It's really nice to meet you, Haru-chan."

They've known each other for all of ten minutes, but already this boy is comfortable enough to be adding childish suffixes to Haru's name. A thought akin to he needs to get a clue, traipses along Haru's mind. 

But strangely enough, Haru does nothing to deter Makoto from his nickname. 

—

Makoto has osteosarcoma, Haru finds out one muggy cloudy day in September. A bone cancer, that is know to occur in children who are taller than average or experiencing rapid growth spurts. It started in his left knee a couple of months ago, and the doctors are going to perform a limb salvage surgery on him tomorrow. 

As he talks about it, Makoto tries not to sound scared, but the trembling of his voice betrays him. He sits cross legged on his bed, rubbing his thumbnail with the pad of his index finger methodically. 

The window blinds are pulled up, showcasing that bleak gray of the outside. Even the flowers in the garden are tired and somber, drooping under the weight of raindrops swollen with grief. Rain pats along the window, like little fingers tapping to get their attention but it goes unnoticed in favor of conversations concerning the health of two teenage boys. 

Another teenage boy, who never has to have conversations like these about himself, knocks on the door but lets himself in anyways. 

—

Makoto and Haru get new neighbors come Christmas Eve. Nagisa and Rei, both one year their juniors, and both afflicted with brain tumors. Proudly Nagisa wears colorful knit hats and bright scarves over the fuzzy, nearly bald expanse of his head that, judging from family pictures he pins on the whiteboard in his room, used to be covered with thick blond curls. Rei is less eager to show off his hairlessness, grumbling occasionally about the lack of beauty in baldness and opting to shove a simple black beanie on his head. 

They are never separated, whether it is during short visits to the older boys' room or to their chemo treatments, Nagisa has Rei firmly wrapped around his finger. His bright, sun-soaked smile is good not just for Rei, but for all of them. When there isn't anything to smile about Nagisa does so anyway, choosing to live under a unique philosophy. 

"I don't need to live a long life exactly, but I need to live a happy one." 

—

Valentine's Day, Haru is fourteen now and Rin is fresh off a birthday when he comes in for a visit.

He looks terrible.

He's thinner than Haru ever remembers seeing him, sharp collarbones and thin hands rivaling his own. With his pale skin and sunken, purple stained eyes Rin looks like he hasn't slept in days. 

"My sister needs a new heart," he says, voice hollow. 

Haru's eyebrow quirks up. "I know."

"She needs one, Haru," Rin talks like there's something stuck in his throat. His hands, curled into fists in his lap, shake. "She needs one, and I'm not a match. No one is, it seems. Her needs are so rare, and every day we're being pushed lower and lower on the donor list because there are more important people dying." 

Rin's breathing is too fast to be normal and he's shaking. He grips his chest and suddenly coughs, thick wet coughs, into his hand. It's stained red when he pulls it away, but he attempts to wipe it on his pants so no one sees. Fat tears drip from his eyes onto the floor. 

"Why can't she just have mine? How come I'm not a match for her, Haru?" he pleads, so pitifully it makes Haru's heart want to break. "She needs it so much more than I do."

Rin stands up so quickly his chair falls to the floor. "It's not fair! What did she ever do to deserve this? It's not fucking _fair—"_ his yelling, his angry, helpless yelling, is cut off by another round of coughing. Blood drips from between his fingers when he tries to cover it, and it makes him cry more. 

"You're pushing yourself too hard. Thinking about something you can't control isn't doing you any good, and you're just stressing yourself out. Look what you're doing to yourself." Haru tries to contain the anger in his voice, but it leaks out in the spaces between his words. Rin is killing himself worrying so much about his sister, and she needs him to be strong. 

Instead of yelling back, or saying anything at all, Rin just sobs, kneeling in front of the bed while Haru runs his thin fingers through his hair. 

—

April is when the flowers began to awake from their winter-long slumber, rising from the ground to greet the spring. 

Haru walks with bare feet where the nurses won't be able to see him and pushes Makoto in front of him in a wheelchair, newly-amputated leg hidden by a thick green blanket. 

"It's so beautiful," Makoto remarks, looking at the barely there wildflowers peeking from beneath the soil and taking in the bare branches of the trees. He leans down so he can touch the ground, taking soil between his fingers and relishing the potential of life hidden within. 

They stop at the pond together, Haru still dipping his toes in while Makoto admires from his wheelchair. 

Haru thinks about the plants and their willingness to continue living, even through the harsh cold and long months without sunlight. A challenge does not deter them from their thirst to thrive, and it's resilience like that Haru wishes he possessed. 

—

His birthday comes around again, his fifteenth, and Haru is greeted with a bitter cold he's never known before, shivers that wrack his whole body. He can't breathe no matter how hard he tries. 

Makoto is crying out his name, calling for a nurse or doctor or somebody, anybody to come and help Haru-chan please he's dying someone help. They come quickly, surrounding Haru as he gasps and heaves, reaching for his throat like he's trying to pry off the hand of the disease cutting off his airway. He thrashes this way and that, eventually turning to spill the contents of his stomach off the side of the bed to the floor. 

He stops then, slick with sweat and shaking slightly. 

The doctor comes in, sits on the bed with Haru while she rubs soothing circles on his back and he hopes that the worst is over, it was just a flare up and he'll be fine. 

But the urge to vomit returns, and this time little else comes up except for a syrupy mixture of blood and bile that goes straight into the bucket procured for him. He continues to dry heave, body burning up from the inside and tears dripping off his lashes. 

This must be what dying feels like. 

—

Rin can't stop coughing. He's curled over the edge of the sink, spitting out pain and grief and the coppery taste of his own blood down the drain. He's breathing hard, panicking, as he turns on the faucet and watches his fluids float away. 

His lungs burn so bad there must be holes in them. In this condition, Rin thinks, there's no way he could ever have a heart fit for his sister. 

—

"Rei-chan, what do you wanna be when you grow up?" Nagisa gazes at the cieling, arms crossed behind his head and counting the gray and yellow dots speckled on it. 

Rei looks up from his book, curiosity woven into his expression. "What makes you think we'll get to grow up, Nagisa-kun? At the rate our health is deteriorating, it seems highly unlikely at this point." 

Nagisa sits up, sleeping cap flopping in a silly way. "Why do you have to be so cynical? Just because we're dying doesn't mean we can't dream! Humph, well what about you, Haru-chan? What do you wanna be?"

Haru shrugs, because he's never thought about it before. It's never occurred to him that he'll ever have a life outside of a hospital room. And every year that passes with him here gives him even less reason to think about it. Personally, Haru agrees with Rei. He doesn't think Rei's cynical, just realistic. 

He feels so caged, trapped within the four walls of the hospital room and in the clutches of a disease they don't even have a name for. When they diagnosed him at the tender age of ten, they said he might have a chance. By fifteen, they told him it was terminal. Once Haru hits twenty, they say, he won't even be alive. 

He's so scared to die, honestly, but never has it seemed like a kinder fate. The drugs aren't working, and if he dies then maybe he'll finally be free. 

Free. 

—

Rin dies on an especially cold day in November. 

Gou, not two weeks later. 

—

Hours ago, a doctor by the name of Sasabe Goro arrived at the hospital, armed with unrivaled medical skill and a new procedure that could save lives. It was risky, designed to remove brain tumors in the most efficient way possible, but it had an estimated success rate of 50 percent. 

Two lucky kids in Haru's hospital wing have been selected to undergo the operation. 

"Good luck Nagisa, Rei." Makoto tells them right before they're about to be wheeled in. He squeezes their hands, so thin and frail, and smiles encouragingly. Nagisa beams, reassures him that he'll be back, there's no way they're getting rid of him that easily. Rei just nods, determined to return in one piece. 

Haru watches as they leave, waving at them with a small smile gently pulling at the corners of his mouth. 

This is the last time he sees either of them. 

—

They aren't allowed outside anymore, and Makoto is barely allowed out of bed. Lately he's always in pain, his bones aching down to the marrow. Medicine doesn't help anymore. 

He naps a lot now, cutting the time he and Haru can spend together outside of treatments and away from illness down to a couple hours. It's during one of these naps that the doctors come in for a quick checkup. They don't wake him, but Haru can hear them talking about the cancer. 

It's in his lungs. The cancer has metastasized in so many other parts of Makoto's body that amputation can't save him anymore. The damage is extensive, and at this point he has only weeks left. 

Haru wants to yell, wants to thrash about and break things and scream into the highest heavens why. Why do things like this happen to people who don't deserve them? Makoto has siblings younger than him, who depend on him, who need him, and never has Haru met anyone so kind and selfless. He doesn't deserve to die, not when there are people like Haru who have very little to live for and have squandered what little life they've been given in silence and lack of emotional expression. Haru doesn't think he will ever be able to find the right words to express how much Makoto means to him in time, the same happening to him that happened with Nagisa and Rei and Rin. 

A thought like that scares him more than death. 

—

Early on a January Wednesday, when the light is watery blue and purple with morning, Haru is sharing a bed with Makoto, laying on his stomach while the other boy is on his back. Makoto still has his hair, having forgone chemotherapy long ago to suffer naturally. It's both foolish and intelligent to Haru, because there's no sense in trying to cure something that can't be cured, but the comfort of knowing that you're trying is sometimes enough. He runs his fingers through it, admiring the coarse texture of it, a testament to the flicker of life still inside Makoto. Haru's own hair is thin, feathery, weakened by his own body. It falls out in chunks when he combs it, tangled between the teeth mockingly. 

With cracked pale lips Makoto grins, sighing in content at the feeling. Lazily his hand finds Haru's, threading his fingers in the spaces. He squeezes gently. 

"You're my best friend, Haru-chan." he says, turning to the side to look at Haru with sleepy green hues. "Thank you."

Haru squeezes back, with a murmured reply. "You're my best friend too."

Their eyelids slip closed, coaxed by sleep, and when Haru wakes up Makoto isn't there anymore. 

—

He's twenty-six now, a living miracle. He doesn't live in the children's hospital anymore, having been released some eight years ago. A personal, morbid kind of graduation. Instead he lives with his parents, who take care of him just like the nurses did. 

"Is this show any good, Haruka?" his father asks, settling down on the couch next to him. Haru shrugs his shoulders, having not really paid any attention to it prior. He shivers, even in the summer heat, goosebumps rising on his arms and face. Almost two decades have passed and the cold still comes from within. 

He adjusts the blanket covering his thin body, with bony shoulders and sharp collarbones, pulling it tighter around him. He yawns, taking one last glance at the television before he closes his eyes for another nap. 

Haru hates the color white, but that's all he sees. However, this white isn't cold and immaculate like the white if the hospital he grew up in. This white is warm, comforting, inviting. It makes him feel peaceful, a lightness in his chest that almost feels like freedom. 

"Hey."

"Haru!"

"Haru-chan!"

"Haruka-senpai!"

Haru turns at the sound of his name, his eyes landing on a group of boys he remembers so fondly. They look happy, healthy, as they wave at him enthusiastically. One of them, with a shock of red hair and charming red eyes, steps forward with an outstretched hand. 

"What took you so long?"


End file.
